NEW YORK — William Safire, the conservative columnist and word warrior who feared no corner of the English language, died Sunday at age 79.
The Pulitzer Prize winner died in Maryland, assistant Rosemary Shields said. He had been diagnosed with cancer, but she declined to say when it had happened or what type of cancer he had.
Safire spent more than 30 years writing for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times. In his "On Language" column in The New York Times Magazine and more than a dozen books, Safire traced the origins of words and everyday phrases such as "straw man," "under the bus" and "the proof is in the pudding."
Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor of The Associated Press, who served as a correspondent and Washington bureau chief of the Times during Safire's years as a columnist, said the conservative writer was a mentor and friend to a generation of Washington journalists of all political persuasions.
"He believed in the values of journalism - of ferreting out the truth and holding leaders to account, Republicans and Democrats," Oreskes said. "Above all, he loved to encourage his colleagues to break a good story and raise hell."
Safire penned more than 3,000 columns, aggressively defending civil liberties and Israel while tangling with political figures.
As a speechwriter in the Nixon White House, Safire penned Vice President Spiro Agnew's famous phrase "nattering nabobs of negativism," a tongue-in-cheek alliteration that Safire claimed was directed not at the press but at Vietnam defeatists.
Safire also wrote several novels and served as chairman of the Dana Foundation, a philanthropy that supports brain science, immunology and arts education.
Safire's scathing columns on the Carter White House Budget Director Bert Lance's financial affairs won him the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1978; in 1995 Safire was named to the Pulitzer board.
Safire, born Dec. 17, 1929, lived in the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Md., with his wife, Helene; they had a son and a daughter.
Information for this article was contributed by Derek Rose of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 09/28/2009